Kohl Christensen, a SolarWorld Authorized Installer working with Bonterra Solar on the island of Oahu, Hawaii will promote the benefits of solar during his travels for the Big Wave World Tour 2011-2012. Kohl will post monthly blogs updating his surf-and-solar adventures including this first post. SolarWorld is proud to sponsor individuals like Kohl who aspire to better the world through solar.

We just wrapped up one of our larger installs this year here in Hawaii, Kaupuni village - an outstanding model for low-income projects around the country.

I will be taking a short break from my installations here at home and am gearing up for a trip to California and then to Chile. I got nominated for the Billabong XXL awards (Performance of the year category) in Anaheim. That basically means that I had a pretty good year chasing huge waves around the globe. The next night is the kick off of the Big Wave World Tour. My friend Jamie Sterling, also from Hawaii, took first. We will be celebrating his victory with a little help from their sponsor, Jim Beam. I managed to come in second place on the tour so I imagine I will be doing a bit of celebrating myself.

After the big weekend I'll head up to Mammoth for a few days of skiing and get some cross-training in on the slopes. Snowboarding is great until you land upside down on really hard snow. That happened two months ago on the slopes of Mt. Bachelor (level 2 AC seperation of the shoulder). So this trip to the mountains will be a real mellow one. The shoulder is feeling a lot better but I am still not surfing. My plan after Mammoth is to head down to Chile where they are holding the first stop on the big wave tour and do some serious rehab on the shoulder. My buddy is a physical therapist down there and he plans to get me back in the water as fast as he can. While I am doing the physical training, I plan on meeting with the SolarWorld distributor in Santiago to sort out some material for an off-grid installation on Easter Island.

We plan on making a trip out to the island to help educate the locals on how solar power works and show them its benefits. I have some friends there from a previous visit and they are really excited about me coming out and teaching them about renewable energy. I also know of some other spots in Chile that I think could really benefit from the use of an off-grid solar system. I have been traveling to remote locations on surf trips for years and now, after becoming a solar contractor and teaming up with SolarWorld, it feels really good to be able to travel back to these spots and share some of my knowledge. We are so dependent on petroleum that a small amount of education about renewable energy and solar power can really go a long way in getting ourselves off of that dependency.